Poor heat dissipation is a common issue for microelectronics device packages. Semiconductor chips can have localized overheating that can be deleterious to product yield, performance and reliability of the resulting microelectronics device packages. A thermal management device such as a heat sink is typically placed on the backside of wafers for heat dissipation to be transported through a molding compound encapsulating a surface of the wafer to the ambient. However, the molding compound typically a mixture of an epoxy and a silica filler, has a low thermal conductivity that is generally in the range of 0.6 W/m-K to 0.8 W/m-K. This can make the molding compound a barrier to heat dissipation.
For processes where the thermal management device is attached to the wafer, a back-side grinding process is needed to reduce the thickness of the molding compound. However, such grinding process may cause the molding compound to become undone or delaminated from the wafer to which it is attached to. Where this has occurred, the edges of chips of the wafer may be susceptible to cracking and chipping and/or exposed to corrosive environmental influences during a subsequent dicing process and associated handling.